Microgrids Offer Solutions for Military Installations and Local Communities

by National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA)

Bigger is not always better, and sometimes small can be HUGE…

The lessons learned from the Northeast blackout of 2003 were re-learned in the Southwest recently when a massive operator-error-induced blackout shut down the electric grid from western Arizona to southern California and northern Baja California, Mexico. The economic damage caused has been estimated to be $80–$100 billion, affecting schools, universities, court systems, and the U.S. military.

In the San Diego area alone, the triumvirate of military installations, Naval Base San Diego, Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, and Camp Pendleton were forced to resort to fossil-fuel generator power. But what if, when an event like the San Diego outage occurs, these essential assets could be immediately disengaged from the larger grid and begin to function as a self-sufficient entity drawing from a menu of energy sources and load management technologies, not suddenly reliant on diesel?

Microgrids, which can be defined as an interconnected set of electricity sources and electrical loads that operate under a common control authority, are a particular application of Smart Grid technologies. Because grid operators usually do not have authoritative control over the loads they serve, the “common control” aspect of this definition is what differentiates the grid from a microgrid.

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